As I've explained already, Melhed signed the treaty because they had to. We had no alternative.
Then we started planning for expansion in the rogue regions in the south as a way to find new land - we even negotiated with Thalmarkin to try and work out a joint scheme for the expansion.
Then Riombara, after having betrayed Melhed to Thalmarkin when Pavel was trying to build a coalition against Fingolfin, suddenly decided to go to war in the name of "sovereignty" after discovering that, amazingly, Melhed had only agreed to recognise the King of Kings because they had no other choice.
That stirred things up in Melhed, especially when Thalmarkin demanded that Melhed get ready for war against the south at the same time. So naturally you then had arguments over which side we should join while Maya tried to play for time as much as possible, partly because of pro-southern plots against her.
Eventually it got to the point where the leaders of the south were ignoring Maya's letters and Riombara seemed to be doing nothing. We were just about to throw our lot in with the north when Riombara's general replied to an ultimatum Immanuel had sent him and announced that his army was two days away from Melhed and that the realm itself was just about to finish voting to go to war.
So suddenly Melhed had the option of joining the north and maybe picking up a few more regions from Fronen (which would almost certainly have meant killing a former ally) or joining forces with a massive Riombaran army to try and retake their old capital, their independence and their pride.
It was a no brainer, obviously.
But I don't think any of us could have predicted it until it happened.
